LOCAL >29 detained for tweets about Gezi protest in Turkey

Twenty-nine people were detained overnight in İzmir for “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” on the social media network Twitter, with police forces still searching for 9 more. DHA photo

Twenty-nine people were detained overnight in İzmir for “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” on the social media network Twitter, with police forces still searching for 9 more.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) provincial head Ali Engin, accompanied by party members and relatives of detainees, visited the İzmir Security Directorate’s Smuggling and Organized Crime branch to speak to authorities about the detention of the suspects, who had been tweeting in support of the ongoing Gezi Park protests.

Engin said these people were supporting the movement for a “fair and free country.” “If that is a crime, then we all committed the crime.”

CHP provincial secretary and attorney Sevda Erkan Kılıç said she had studied the files and found nothing that would “provoke the citizens.”

“These statements were things we all shared. We have learned that our friends were subjected to identity checks before at a police station, our guess is that their names were spotted then.”

Some of the families, however, claimed their detained relative did not have a Twitter or Facebook account.